As is known, spectroscopic analysis is used in a significant number of industries as a technique to determine an amount of material in, for example, a solution or gas. More particularly, analytic instruments that implement spectroscopy or spectrometry are used in physical and analytical chemistry in order to identify unknown substances.
There are many different spectroscopy systems in use. One type of optical beam spectroscopy is photothermal (thermal) spectroscopy that is used to measure the optical absorption and thermal characteristics of a sample. A thermal state of a sample is changed due to the absorption of radiation, usually due to effects of a laser beam directed through the sample. Any light that is absorbed by the sample, and not lost by transmission, results in heating of the sample. Changes in temperature, pressure, and density that may occur can be used to determine photothermal spectroscopic measurements. Photothermal lens spectroscopy (PTS or TLS) measures the thermal blooming that occurs when a beam of light heats a transparent sample. Often, this type of spectroscopy is applied to measure the small amounts of substances that may be found in a gas or liquid solution.
A second type of spectroscopy, Cavity Ring-down Spectroscopy (CRDS) measures the optical absorption of excitation energy over time. A CRDS system also measures very small amounts of substances that may be in a gas or liquid solution.
Currently, the analytical spectroscopy instrumentation market is more than $20 billion (USD) annually. The analytical technologies that include liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry, and thermal analysis account for about 25% of this total. Advances are being sought in order to attain new levels as to miniaturization of the equipment, increased resolution, increased sensitivity, and increased speed for liquid chromatography analysis. These increases will have dramatic impacts on laboratory productivity. Further, a portable and fast analysis instrument will create new application areas that cannot be serviced by larger and slower laboratory instruments.
Accordingly, what is needed is an improvement to spectroscopy instrumentation in order to increase ease of portability, speed of analysis, sensitivity of analysis with increased resolution and the detection of minute quantities.